Brilliant, I love this vehicle...

3D view here...

http://twitpic.com/joxyf/full

Oppy has become an expert in the matter of meteorites - the "expertises" should go faster now...

It's like the first gold seekers that found a good place here. All over the place a big nugget direct on the surface.

It's beginning to feel like Antarctica, big flat plain like a meteorite magnet. Could be more for the same fall that produced BI?

Yes ! Phil is damn right. We should stay on the "Follow the Water" trail , NOT embark ourselves on a "Follow the Iron" quest.
BIG discoveries are yet to be made at Endeavour crater : olivine, philosilicates, pyroxene, clays... maybe. Please, don't stop at every rock : let's drive !

Awww, a quick look won't hurt guys Driving is good, and amazing discoveries await us at Endeavour, but looking at any meteorites we find along the way is a good idea because that will tell us a lot about the past of this fascinating area - how the landscape has changed over time, weathering effects here, etc.

And come on... meteorites... ancient, gnarled, radiation-soaked chunks of metal and iron sharpnel from space... sitting on the surface of Mars... right in the path of one of the most amazing spacecraft ever designed, built and sent to another world...

To not stop and pay our respects would be just rude

A quick stop - image it, and drive on. That's about as much as I could probably handle

I would expect it'll be the focus of this weekend's stop.

I was sure you'll answer this, Eduardo!... and it makes sense to me... as well as to RF
But I'd better like Doug's idea of a kind of "Touch & Go".

“You're only here for a short visit. Don't hurry, don't worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.”
-golfer Walter Hagen

The complete panoramic of Nereus on Sol 2010 is done (pancam R2) :

Trying not to forget that what is important is the journey but...come on guys!
I've already run out of map...and we're almost three months behind schedule...
Click to view attachment

OK but we already scored an Eagle at the first shot.So,

Very witty!!!!! So, was Block Island a 5 iron or 6 iron? (OK, I deserve a kick in the pants for that one!).

This mission has proved to be very much about the voyage itself and not a particular end goal. There won't be too much of value to stop for on these deserted plains, I say, let's pause and take a look. For a rover that has lasted or years, and seems good to go for much longer, one day more or less won't mean a lot.

I think this would be an appropriate amount of time to spend at it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQJH5tZLGis

So you're saying we should rename Endeavour to Walley World?

of course maybe we'll get a feature called Griswold at some point...he was a great explorer and the Family Truckster...now that was a fine ship of exploration

well in case any one wants my opinion (and I know no one does)

Would nprev have put up this question, I'd had replied: it's just iron, nick (ok these one is worse than yours HughFromAlice..)

Oh, God, that was foul, Climber!

(I knew I'd get dragged into this somehow... )

This new rock seems like it just might be large enough and have enough contrast to be visible to the HiRise camera. There does seem to be a bit of a dark smudge near where I am guessing the rock is sitting.
Click to view attachment

Regarding how long Opportunity may stop to study this rock, perhaps only in passing. The pancam tracking database indicates images will be taken of "Falcon Crater" on sol 2022, which is tosol. The next apparent craters I can see are about 200 meters beyond the sol 2020 position, suggesting the rover is already long past this new rock. (unless plans have changed)

Don't tell me we have another one...
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P2418L6M1.JPG

This is seriously starting to look like a meteorite "strewnfield", and is reminding me a lot of the "Imilac" fall in Chile's Atacama desert. I'll bet this area is a veritable meteorite garden. What I'd give to be able to wander around here for a sol... I'd be able to add some very impressive specimens to my modest collection...

http://oauniverse.wordpress.com/the-meteorites

Rough Nav cam stitch Sol2020 - latest pics from Exploratorium. At least they give a bit of a feeling of orientation and space. It'll be a fair job to stitch these together manually as there seem to be quite large mismatches and distortions between the images.

Looks like an interesting rock in the far right frame - mid distance about 1 o'clock from centre of frame!!! In fact, I am just wondering with all of these, if each of them might not be 'a chip off the same block' (no pun intended, really). But really interesting just the same.

Click to view attachment

Could this be Falcon Crater?

dont know why we're driving the other way opposite to where we're supposed to go!dont believe opportunity has problems with its wheel.Anyone explain whats happening?

The western leg of this jaunt gets them to much better driving conditions (witness the increase in bedrock we're seeing now) and avoids a large field of Purgatory-type dunes that lies on the direct path to Endeavour.

That's what we'd been calling the "rubble pile" recently in this thread.

Hugh - that's the first of the two new rocks we've been watching for a few sols.

Aha, so it is.

I didn't recognize that the navcam image was the same view as the hazcam referenced earlier. From the hazcam you can't really tell that there's a tiny crater hidden among all that rubble (at least not for these untrained eyes).

A couple more 'Drive Direction' mosaics

2017


2020


These will probably be my last for a week or two as I'm moving house tomorrow! And will be without my broadband for a while...

James

Thanks Fred. What I should have said more explicitly is I was wondering what (if any) the relationship of these rocks might be to Block Island. Interesting that there should be several of them so close together. Are they a group of objects that plunged through the atmosphere all on the same trajectory, bits off 'the old block' that split during atmospheric entry/hitting the ground or is the contiguous location just the outcome of several billion years of chance?

It seems to me that the landing dates could be millions, or hundreds of millions of years apart and the meteorites are laying on the same surface because either that surface has not changed over that time, or a net removal of surface material has left meteorites that were initially at different levels on the same level.

We've arrived at the rock, and oh my, she's a real beauty:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...AKP1301R0M1.JPG
We need a name for it. Any clues from the pancam database?

...how about "Holy Cow"?

Man, what a beauty!!! Bet my bottom dollar that it's another chunk o' iron/nickel.

Rhino

Stu's gonna totally lose his mind when he sees this sucker.

Shelter Island

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...ARP2562R1M1.JPG

She's a beaut!
Click to view attachment
Combined Pan/Nav cams.

Egads! I saw "Shelter Island" listed in the database yesterday, but it didn't register.

Just in time for the season.

Wow oh wow... you're right, nprev! Best-looking starstone yet!! (And I'm away from my PC and can't do anything with the images! Curses! ("Hooray!!" shouts everyone else! )

Managed to download Stereo-photomaker to make this tho...

Click to view attachment

Isn't it a fossilised porcupine?

That's it! I am incorporating... "Martian Iron Works" with headquarters at Meridiani Planum

The raw materials are everywhere: Iron Nickel Meteorites, Hematite (i.e natural ore), red-rust, magnetite, and much more.

My army of hematite gathering rovers and my hordes of magnetic gathering (magnetite) rovers will have cameras -etc for direct download to UMSF. In due time, I will have the Martian Iron and Steel market cornered!

First step: raise $1 trillion USD to get basic infrastructure up and running ... (hmmmm....check back with me later on that one...)

With the new navcams we can pin down the location of Shelter Island exactly. The feature you indicated with the pink arrow, Rocker, is the curved end of a dune. SI is very close by though, where the green arrow points:
Click to view attachment
(Sorry if I've duplicated your work, Tesheiner, but I haven't installed the GM doohickey yet...)

Good luck with the steel. You'll need a supply of an interstitial element like carbon and unless the rovers start encountering a large number of chondrites, I'm not sure where you'll find that on Mars. If you find some chromium to go with the nickel and iron you'll be able to make stainless steel and there would certainly be a demand for that where structures contact the oxidizing soils.

Way to be a wet blanket, Dan.

....well then I'll add an upbeat note; From a standpoint of weight and required strength iron will be fine for the kinds of uses we are accustomed to in the lower gravity, and since the atmosphere itself is not highly oxidizing there really won't be a problem with rust on the parts of structures that don't come in contact with the soil. And for those that do, there is an ample supply of silica which could be fabricated into inert vitreous barriers.

So "Martian Ironworks" is probably still a good investment.

I don't know. Isn't there quite a lot of carbon in the Martian atmosphere? And since we'll be needing the oxygen as well . . .

Dan, its all taken care of in the 130,000 page business plan.
You know, a Trillion dollars does buy a few contingencies.
So stop worrying and just send me $10 for a share and you are in on the ground floor baby!